Critical Essay by Raymond S. Sayers

SOURCE: Sayers, Raymond S. “The Negro in the Romantic Novel.” In The Negro in Brazilian Literature, pp. 165-83. New York: Hispanic Institute in the United States, 1956.

In the following excerpt, Sayers discusses Brazilian abolitionist novels written between 1850 and 1888, many of them thematically influenced by Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.

The period from 1850 to 1888 is marked by great development in the technique, subject matter and quality of Brazilian fiction. From the first tentative fumblings of Teixeira e Sousa and Joaquim Manuel de Macedo before the midpoint of the century, the novel traversed the stages of Indianism, historical fiction, and regionalism, which were still of only national interest, to join the contemporary currents of realism, represented by Machado de Assis, and naturalism, which is seen in the work of Inglês de Sousa...